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New Delhi: Stating that India was exposed to threats from various sources bent on weakening the polity and hindering economic progress, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said yesterday that the challenge of terrorism must be countered comprehensively.
"Open societies like ours are increasingly vulnerable to threats from many sources. There are misguided elements at home and in our neighbourhood and their ideologies negate all that India stands for," Manmohan Singh said at the annual conference of Directors General of Police and Inspectors General of Police here.
He sought to reinforce the message that terror was no longer centred in Jammu and Kashmir and all efforts were being made by outfits to take it to other parts of the country.
"By and large these attempts have remained unsuccessful and our security apparatus must be alert and resilient enough to meet the threats," he said.
Just a day earlier, Home Minister Shivraj Patil had warned that India's nuclear power plants could become targets of terror, especially after the India-US nuclear deal, and said installations in the oil and natural gas, defence, communications and IT sectors were equally vulnerable.
Maintaining that the growth of the mafia, urban gangs, drug trafficking, kidnapping and threats to security of women and aged people had proliferated because of rapid urbanisation, the prime minister said that at one level this was on account of growing disparities.
"The single most important challenge in today's world is the management of change. There is the problem of growing disparities between rich and poor, which is now becoming acute and visible in rural areas. These challenges need resolution," he said.
Noting that Maoist violence was still a major internal security challenge that had swamped vast swathes, Manmohan Singh said effective policing had to be dovetailed with employment generation, land reforms and redistribution of land.
"Naxalite groups continue their attempts to spread their influence and threaten internal security. I am pained when ordinary people's suffer."
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